Fighting for Unionist Home Rule

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, Dublin was being choked by a ring of independent suburbs. Unable to expand either its territory or the number of ratepayers, and prevented from finding space for new housing, the city could neither improve its finances nor tackle its chronic slum problem. A prolonged campaign by the nationalist city to annex the unionist townships met with fierce resistance. The energy invested by both sides in this dispute reveals much about the complex relationship between civil society and urban government, and about that relationship’s role in expressing popular identities. Irish independence in 1922 transformed the dynamics of this struggle, producing some unexpected results. Understanding Dublin’s competing councils informs the debate on the role of civil society in the urban environment, and contributes to wider discussions of national identity, the failure of the Union of 1800, and the emergence of Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State.

Survival and Assimilation: Loyalism in the Interwar Irish Free State

“…The shamrock was a common motif on the street furniture in the city, for instance, but not in the unionist Rathmines township. 86 Nationalist councillors had succeeded in renaming Great Britain Street as Parnell Street and Carlisle Bridge as O'Connell Bridge, but not Sackville Street, which was colloquially rather than officially known as O'Connell Street until 1924. Statues to nineteenthcentury constitutional nationalists Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell stood at either end of that street, which was dissected by a forty-foot column for Admiral Horatio Nelson.…”